Back to Egypt
The Egyptologist has finally finished vetting my book on ancient Egypt, and when the editor said he was couriering the manuscript to me to make the changes a.s.a.p., I have to admit I was a bit nervous. I had no idea what to expect. I had visions of LIAR, LIAR, LIAR!!! scrawled across the whole thing in bright red ink. Not that I knowingly lied, but I'm not generally a writer of non-fiction, and I suspected that my natural bent to make stuff up might have pushed its way into the manuscript without me realizing it.
Well, there was red ink -- lots of it -- but blue ink, black ink, and even pencil as well. I think the Egyptologist was using whatever writing instrument was handy. There was a giant NO! in one part, but after I adjusted to the initial shock of seeing it and read what she was saying no to, I calmed down. It wasn't something I had made up; it was something someone else in one of the research sources I'd used had made up. So, of course, I shall defer to the Egyptologist's greater wisdom and make the change.
On the upside, most of the changes shouldn't be too hard to complete, and I think I can get the work done in a couple of days. One section needs to be completely rewritten (the Egyptologist scratched out just about everything I wrote, and in point form indicated why it was terrible). She wrote way more on that page than I had. Oh, well, back to the drawing board -- ahem, I mean computer.
On the whole, the experience wasn't nearly so demeaning as I had feared. Though I had tried to do a good job with the manuscript, I'd had to research and write the whole thing in just 10 weeks. I wasn't always sure how accurate my sources were, and sometimes I had a tough time finding any information at all. The more I thought about having an expert read what I had written, the more I felt like a fraud. (Though I've never been diagnosed, I'm sure I suffer from paranoia.)
So -- even though I have a couple of days of repairs ahead of me -- I can breathe easy again. The worst is behind me. Pharaohs and Foot Soldiers: One Hundred Ancient Egyptian Jobs You Might Have Desired or Dreaded is almost out of my hands. Once I send the revised manuscript back, the artist can finish up her illustrations (I've seen some of them and they're really fun!), and then sometime next spring -- probably February -- the book will appear in bookstores everywhere. TA-DA!!!
The End